


Because of You (Noah's Epilogue)

by enjolraes



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 10:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7798075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjolraes/pseuds/enjolraes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Gansey," Blue said softly, and her tone made him glance back at him. "We have seen enough death for a lifetime."</p><p>"I do suppose you're right," he said, eyes drifting back to the church, skimming through the shabby gravestones. His heart turned over with the thought that his could be alongside them so easily if anything in their quest had gone wrong. Disastrously wrong. Wrong beyond the point of fixing, even if the solution was to break their hearts just a little bit more. </p><p>"You're alive," Blue said even softer. "Don't you dare take that for granted. Not after all this." </p><p>Gansey pressed his lips to her forehead, just once. He squeezed his eyes shut. </p><p>"After all this," he repeated, his mouth twisting into a ghost of a smile. "Jane? Is this all there is?" </p><p>Blue's eyes flashed with stars and ghosts and magic and Gansey's reflected in them. Fiercely, she drew herself up to the tallest she could manage and stared him straight in the eyes. </p><p>"No," Blue said, with all the ferocity she could muster (which was quite a bit, she was a ferocious thing, Blue Sargent), "This is the beginning."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Because of You (Noah's Epilogue)

No matter where the story begins or ends, it is about Henrietta. 

Henrietta, with its sprawling valleys, with the whispering willows, with boys and girls and ghosts and dreams, with magic and power and everything green and lush and alive. Henrietta, echoing with the whispers of those sleeping, of those awake, of those in that limbo of in-between. Henrietta, home of a very blue house filled with psychics and a very psychic house filled with Blue. Henrietta, which borne a dreamer, a magician, a mirror, a ghost. A king.

Henrietta, Virginia didn't seem out of place or any real form of extraordinary on a map. It looked like a valley, and maybe those valleys held secrets, and maybe the trees whispered them to each other, but didn't every valley in every town? Of course, a map didn't have the pulses and pulls of energy and vibrancy and vibrations of magic written into its pages. Henrietta had the kind of magic you needed to experience for yourself, and many did, because many were drawn to it for that same reason.

Henrietta was a place in a valley that could have been anything like any other place in any other valley, but it wasn't. Because a king slept there, under a mountain, under a tomb, under years and years of hidden history. 

A king also lived there. 

And for all intents and purposes about this story that both starts and ends with Henrietta, both kings are the same. 

 

Richard Campbell Gansey III had forgotten how many times he'd been told he was destined for greatness. It was born with him, or maybe borne from him. It lived in his bones, made from gold and power and valor. He heard it in clinking glasses at high end parties, in the faces of his teachers at Aglionby, in Ronan's frenzied eyes on sleepless nights, in Adam's smile when he let it dance across his face uninhibited, in Blue's fingertips, electric, touching his. In Noah's gentleness and awfulness, in his sacrifice. 

The story started in Henrietta: two boys bound by a ley line, electrified and terrifying, with death twice strong, and then death once removed. Gansey was alive because Noah had died. And in the years to follow, everything was about finding Glendower. 

Glendower, who whispered in Gansey's ear that night. Glendower, a rightful ruler. Glendower, who Gansey sought as furiously as Arthur searched for the Grail. Glendower, who pulsed on like the sun buried underneath the horizon as Gansey pulsed on as a sun at high noon. They were destined, fated, bound. Gansey knew this.

Gansey also knew now that it was Noah who whispered in his ear that night when hornets swam in his breath. Gansey knew that he was a king, that he was destined for greatness, and that Glendower was also a king, who was also destined for greatness, but their paths weren't crossed because of the stroke of fate he had thought.

It was Noah who whispered in his ear. It was Noah who saved him, seven years ago, and again now. Noah whispered to him about Glendower, because Gansey needed to look for him to become the glorious, shining, king Gansey was destined to become. Noah put Gansey on the path he needed to be on. 

Without Noah, Gansey would have been swarmed with bees and stung to death, a ten year old's life, silenced. But because of Noah, Gansey was alive twice over. Because of Noah, Gansey had lived to meet Ronan, to meet Adam, to meet Blue. Because of Noah, Gansey came to Henrietta. Because of Noah, Gansey became the king he was destined to be. 

 

Now, everything was simultaneously muted and more alive than he'd ever felt it. Gansey was a graduate, Gansey would turn eighteen, Gansey was about to venture with his best friends on a trek across the country. For the first time in his life, Richard Campbell Gansey III wasn't searching after something more, after Glendower. He was a seventeen year old going to take youth by its glorious hands and swing dance with it until he became old and grey. Gansey was going to live.

This was a fact ever punctuated by the days passing and shedding without Gansey feeling the buzz of anxiety in his chest, in his mouth. He didn't have to fit his entire lifespan, his entire something more, into days ticked off by the ever quickening clock.

The night before they were about to leave, Gansey drove the Pig to the churchyard his now very intact soul had passed through on St. Mark's Eve, his liveliness dripping away as he whispered his very chilling last words to the ever incredible Blue Sargent. The ever incredible Blue and Adam and Ronan and Noah. His magicians. 

Right now, the ever incredible humans in question, accompanied by the equally as incredible Henry Cheng, were all crowded in the graveyard where Blue had seen Gansey for the first time, a soul barely existing, a soul fading. (Because of Noah, Gansey was a soul, alive.) Gansey looked at the crumbling church, the tombstones that looked like they would turn to dust with a touch of his gilded finger, the vines growing up and around. Henry and Adam and Ronan were in the Pig, smushed both unhappily and happily into the backseat. Henry was the unhappily portion, because Ronan and Adam were the very happily portion. Their mouths were most often intertwined and alive, like both of them could pull magic out of the other's with a little tongue.

They probably could, Gansey thought. They had the power to do anything. They were his divine, incredible, glorious magicians. 

"You have got to stop," Gansey heard Henry's voice crescendo out of the Pig. "I am trying to sit here, and dudes, it is near IMPOSSIBLE to do so with you two apparently trying to dream a whole new world using only the power of your two bodies--" 

Henry's voice was muted, and Gansey turned to see Blue walking on her toes over to him. She was in some sort of purple corduroy dress with pockets sewn haphazardly onto it in varying textures and fabrics, flowers smushed in the frontmost one. These were for Noah. Blue had scattered them throughout the day, after all of them had graduated and Ronan had started dreaming a new magical forest and they had decided to venture off across the country, all of them, if only for the summer. Ronan and Adam had agreed to come along last minute, partially, Gansey thought, because Ronan needed to make sure Gansey was okay, and he needed to make sure Adam was okay, and their okayness so frequently overlapped. The story started and began with Henrietta, but it did not always need to exist there.

"Hi," he said, grinning. She dazzled him perhaps even more now that her lips weren't a death sentence, and he could thrill with pressing his to them without any dire circumstances.

"Hi," she answered, and she fell easily into the crook of his arm. "Penny for your thoughts? I'd much rather hear them then Henry narrating Adam and Ronan sucking face." 

"We might have to hear that for a while," Gansey said lazily, his fingers looping through hers. His stomach turned excitedly looking at her lips.

"You know, it's actually not the worst of things to hear." 

"Noah," Gansey said suddenly, interrupting their hazy happiness, as the sun dripped over the hill. He felt a sense of finality with it, like all of his adventures here laced with dreamers and sleeping kings and magic might be coming to a close. "I just... I never got to thank him. I never got to ask Glendower for his life."

Blue gazed up at him. "Gansey, he asked Glendower for yours. Noah and Glendower both sacrificed themselves for you, if you think about it. All that magic, all that.... kingliness, was channeled into you and all that golden-gleamed glory." 

"That doesn't make me feel better," he murmured, looking into the church, searching impossibly for Noah. 

"Gansey," Blue said softly, and her tone made him glance back at him. "We have seen enough death for a lifetime."

"I do suppose you're right," he said, eyes drifting back to the church, skimming through the shabby gravestones. His heart turned over with the thought that his could be alongside them so easily if anything in their quest had gone wrong. Disastrously wrong. Wrong beyond the point of fixing, even if the solution was to break their hearts just a little bit more. 

"You're alive," Blue said even softer. "Don't you dare take that for granted. Not after all this." 

Gansey pressed his lips to her forehead, just once. He squeezed his eyes shut. 

"After all this," he repeated, his mouth twisting into a ghost of a smile. "Jane? Is this all there is?" 

Blue's eyes flashed with stars and ghosts and magic and Gansey's reflected in them. Fiercely, she drew herself up to the tallest she could manage and stared him straight in the eyes. 

"No," Blue said, with all the ferocity she could muster (which was quite a bit, she was a ferocious thing, Blue Sargent), "This is the beginning." 

"And what now?"

Blue's eyes darted to the church, and Gansey's followed, and maybe, if he squinted hard enough, he could see Noah grinning at them from the other side. Wherever he was, Gansey vowed to himself that he would go one day too, and thank Noah a million times over. Trade his life for his, do it all over, anything. Because Noah gave him this.

Blue grinned recklessly, and sadly, and happily, all at once. "Onwards and upwards," she said, his words sounding like music in her voice. 

"Excelsior," Gansey agreed. 

And as they all drove off into the night, Gansey could feel the weight of the ley line less and less. He thought back to the conversation he had with Helen before everything went sideways a million ways at once, where she asked what would happen when he found Glendower. That's all there is, he had said, echoing his half-self. 

Now he realized he was wrong. Richard Campbell Gansey III was a king, a king destined for greatness. A king who would create his legacy and fall asleep and dream in it, a king who would be better, a king who could rest easy knowing that Henrietta would still be bursting with magic. 

No matter where the story begins or ends, it is about Henrietta. About the dreamers and the magicians and the witches and the ghosts. About the magic tucked away in nooks and crannies and bursting from the seams. About the forest that was dreamt into existence, about the new one being dreamt to take its place. But most importantly, the story is about the kings that sleep here. The kings that live here. The king that was destined for greatness. The king that found his king, buried here. The king that realized that he was his own something more, right there, bronzed and gilded along every corner. The story is about Henrietta, and the story is about its magic, and the story is about its kings. 

Richard Campbell Gansey III had forgotten how many times he was destined for greatness.  
He was a king.  
This was the year he was going to make his legacy greater than his death.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this back in April when trk came out because the ending fell so flat for me and i wanted justice for noah but i never posted it so !!!! here ya go


End file.
